Tag Archives: Medicare

CMS terminates Idaho hospital’s Medicare contract

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https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/finance/cms-terminates-idaho-hospital-s-medicare-contract-072718.html

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CMS ended its provider agreement with Blackfoot-based Idaho Doctors’ Hospital July 20.

Under rules enacted last September, a healthcare facility must average at least two inpatients per day and an at least two-night average length of stay to be considered an inpatient hospital for Medicare reimbursement. In April, CMS determined Doctors’ Hospital is not primarily engaged in providing care to inpatients and does not meet the new federal requirements for Medicare participation. The agency subsequently sent Doctors’ Hospital a Medicare termination notice.

“To go from being OK just 18 months ago, when we had our last survey, to now being told that we don’t meet the CMS conditions of participation because of new interpretations of the regulations is just difficult to comprehend,” Dave Lowry, administrative manager at Idaho Doctors’ Hospital, told KIFI earlier this month. “Like any business that is regulated by government agencies, we fully expect there to be changes to rules and their interpretations, but this drastic level of change just goes to show how much uncertainty there is in healthcare right now.”

After receiving the termination notice from CMS, Doctors’ Hospital sent letters to all patients affected by the contract termination, a spokesperson told Becker’s Hospital Review.

“We have worked with other area hospitals who provide the same services, and our staff provides this information for any patients who call with questions on where to go for care,” the Doctors’ Hospital spokesperson said.

 

Walmart drug program cheaper for many Medicare patients

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https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/walmart-drug-program-cheaper-many-medicare-patients-n893811

Grand Opening At A New Wal-Mart Store

Walmart’s $4 generic prescription drug program ends up being cheaper for some Medicare patients than their own health insurance, according to a new study released Monday.

It’s more evidence that patients cannot always rely on their health insurance to get them the lowest prices for their prescription drugs, said Dr. Joseph Ross of the Yale School of Medicine, who led the study.

“Patients were paying more out of pocket when they were using their insurance than when they went to Walmart,” Ross told NBC News.

The study, published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, documents that Walmart provides a better deal than the government’s health insurance plan for people over 65. And that is bad news for Medicare, because if people don’t take their drugs, whether for cost or for other reasons, they tend to get sicker and then end up costing even more to treat.

“Everyone’s talking about pharmacy costs these days,” Ross said. “We did this study in part because of all the discussion about pharmacy gag rules.”

Pharmacy gag rules prevent pharmacists from telling patients that they could save money on drugs, for instance by not using their health insurance.

Pharmacy benefit managers are the middlemen between drug companies and pharmacies, and some of those companies have agreements forbidding talk of discounts. But some states have also banned pharmacists from giving this information to customers.

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, at least 22 states have some kind of gag rule legislation.

One way patients can get around this is to ask, but few people think to do so.

Ross and colleagues decided to see what would happen if Medicare patients just took advantage of Walmart’s program offering $4 generic prescription drugs.

They looked at Walmart’s generic list for drugs commonly used to treat heart conditions, including high blood pressure and high cholesterol.

“Next, we used Medicare prescription drug plan data from June 2017 to determine beneficiary out-of-pocket costs for the lowest-priced dose of each drug in each plan,” they wrote. They got data on more than 2,000 Medicare prescription drug plans, including Medicare Advantage plans.

Overall, 21 percent of the plans asked patients to pay more out of pocket for the drugs than they would pay if they just got them for $4 at Walmart, the team reported.

Medicare Advantage plans were the most expensive for patients, Ross said. And the higher-tier programs were the worst, he found.

“Twenty percent of the time, at least, we should go to Walmart,” Ross said.

It doesn’t help that Medicare is very complicated. Patients can choose from dozens of different plans, depending on where they live, and it can take a great deal of research to find out which plan is most likely to cover a particular person’s health conditions for the least amount of money.

“Each Medicare drug plan has its own list of covered drugs (called a formulary),” the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services says on its website.

“Many Medicare drug plans place drugs into different ‘tiers’ on their formularies. Drugs in each tier have a different cost. A drug in a lower tier will generally cost you less than a drug in a higher tier.”

Ross said it is time-consuming to compare one Medicare plan to another. But understanding one of the many plans tells people very little about what the others might offer.

“If you have read through the details and material for one plan, you have read through the details and materials for one plan. It’s very hard to compare,” he said.

In addition, any given plan may change the drugs that it covers and their prices throughout the year.

Ross said he studied Walmart because its $4 price for a 30-day supply of a generic drug seemed like the least expensive option, but other retailers also have inexpensive drug plans. Some grocery-based pharmacies even offer free drugs, such as antibiotics.

These offers get customers into the store, and the hope is that they’ll buy something else while they are there.

Ross said no patient should decide on a Medicare plan based solely on whether Walmart offers a better deal on prescriptions.

Switching plans might not be the best idea, because different plans provide different levels of coverage for doctor visits, medical procedures and other health needs.

“What we are showing is there may be some ways to save some money on some drugs by going to Walmart,” Ross said.

According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, about 90 percent of prescriptions filled in the U.S. are for generic drugs. Most people get health insurance through an employer, and the typical co-pay for a generic drug for a patient covered by employer-provided health insurance is $11, Kaiser found. For a brand-name drug, the average co-pay is $33.

Walmart is moving aggressively to get a big share of the U.S. health care market. Besides having large pharmacies, stores offer free health screenings and the company has said it intends to expand its locations of retail walk-in health clinics.

Walmart is also negotiating a closer partnership with health insurer Humana, including the possibility of buying it outright, according to CNBC.

The discount retailer’s $4 generic prescriptions beat Medicare’s co-pays 21 percent of the time, a study found.

 

 

 

Trump Administration Seeks a Big Change in How Medicare Pays Doctors

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http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/2018/07/23/Trump-Administration-Seeks-Big-Change-How-Medicare-Pays-Doctors

The Trump administration wants to change the way Medicare pays doctors for office visits by creating a flat payment of about $135 for all appointments. The change is intended to reduce paperwork significantly but is meeting resistance from specialists who say they will be underpaid for their services, which could result in more doctors refusing to see Medicare patients.

Currently, there are five levels of Medicare office visits, each with its own payment amount, ranging from a short visit with a nurse (level 1) to an in-depth evaluation from a specialist (level 5). Visits with doctors typically start at level 2, with a current billing rate for new patients of $76, and move up in complexity to level 5, with a billing rate of $211.

Not all doctors would lose out, since less complex visits would be billed at a higher rate under the proposal, but the specialists currently billing at the top level would see a reduction in fees. “This proposal is likely to penalize physicians who treat sicker patients, even though they spend more time and effort and more resources managing those patients,” Deborah J. Grider, an expert on the subject, told The New York Times.

On the other hand, the proposal would reduce the time-intensive requirement to document the different levels of services, particularly at the upper end. “The differences between Levels 2 to 5 are often really difficult to discern and time-consuming to document,” Dr. Kate Goodrich, Medicare’s chief medical officer, toldthe Times.

One thing the proposed billing system won’t change is the overall cost of spending on physician services under Medicare. While the proposal would redirect some of the fees from one set of doctors to another, spending would remain at roughly $70 billion a year.

 

 

Sniffles? Cancer? Under Medicare Plan, Payments for Office Visits Would Be Same for Both

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The Trump administration is proposing huge changes in the way Medicare pays doctors for the most common of all medical services, the office visit, offering physicians basically the same amount, regardless of a patient’s condition or the complexity of the services provided.

Administration officials said the proposal would radically reduce paperwork burdens, freeing doctors to spend more time with patients. The government would pay one rate for new patients and another, lower rate for visits with established patients.

“Time spent on paperwork is time away from patients,” said Seema Verma, the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. She estimated that the change would save 51 hours of clinic time per doctor per year.

But critics say the proposal would underpay doctors who care for patients with the greatest medical needs and the most complicated ailments — and could discourage some physicians from taking Medicare patients. They also say it would increase the risk of erroneous and fraudulent payments because doctors would submit less information to document the services provided.

Medicare would pay the same amount for evaluating a patient with sniffles and a head cold and a patient with complicated Stage 4 metastatic breast cancer, said Ted Okon, the executive director of the Community Oncology Alliance, an advocacy group for cancer doctors and patients. He called that “simply crazy.”

Dr. Angus B. Worthing, a rheumatologist, said he understood the administration’s objective. “Doctors did not go to medical school to type on a computer all day,” he said.

But, he added: “This proposal is setting up a potential disaster. Doctors will be less likely to see Medicare patients and to go into our specialty. Patients with arthritis and osteoporosis may have to wait longer to see the right specialists.”

Private insurers often follow Medicare’s lead, so the proposed change has implications that go far beyond the Medicare program.

The proposal, part of Medicare’s physician fee schedule for 2019, is to be published Friday in the Federal Register, with an opportunity for public comment until Sept. 10. The new policies would apply to services provided to Medicare patients starting in January.

“We anticipate this to be a very, very significant and massive change, a welcome relief for providers across the nation,” Ms. Verma said, adding that it fulfills President Trump’s promise to “cut the red tape of regulation.”

“Evaluation and management services” are the foundation of an office visit. Medicare now recognizes five levels of office visits, with Level 5 involving the most comprehensive medical history and physical examination of a patient, and the most complex decision making by the doctor.

Level 1 is mostly for nonphysician services: for example, a five-minute visit with a nurse to check the blood pressure of a patient recently placed on a new medication.

A Level 5 visit could include a thorough hourlong evaluation of a patient with heart failure, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, high blood pressure and diabetes with blood sugar out of control.

“The differences between Levels 2 to 5 are often really difficult to discern and time-consuming to document,” said Dr. Kate Goodrich, Medicare’s chief medical officer.

Medicare payment rates for new patients now range from $76 for a Level 2 office visit to $211 for a Level 5 visit. The Trump administration proposal would establish a single new rate of about $135. That could mean gains for doctors who specialize in routine care, but a huge hit for those who deal mainly with complicated patients, such as rheumatologists and oncologists.

For established patients, the proposal calls for a payment rate of about $93, in place of current rates ranging from $45 to $148 for the four different levels of office visits.

“This proposal is likely to penalize physicians who treat sicker patients, even though they spend more time and effort and more resources managing those patients,” said Deborah J. Grider, who has audited tens of thousands of medical records and written a book on the subject.

Dr. Atul Grover, the executive vice president of the Association of American Medical Colleges, said, “The single payment rate may not reflect the resources needed to treat patients we see at academic medical centers — the most vulnerable patients, those who have complex medical needs.”

While the proposal would redistribute money among doctors, it is not intended to cut spending under Medicare’s physician fee schedule, which totals roughly $70 billion a year.

If the new rules really do simplify their work, doctors say, they will be elated.

“We can focus more on patient care and less on the administrative burden of documentation and billing,” said Dr. David B. Glasser, an assistant professor of ophthalmology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. “We sometimes joke that it can be more complicated trying to get the coding level right than it is to figure out what’s wrong with the patient.”

But, Dr. Glasser said, the financial impact of the proposal on eye doctors is not yet clear.

Documentation requirements have increased in response to growing concerns about health care fraud and improper payments that cost Medicare billions of dollars a year.

In many cases, federal auditors could not determine whether services were actually provided or were medically necessary. In some cases, they found that doctors had billed Medicare — and patients — for more costly services than they actually performed.

In a report required by federal law, officials estimated early this year that 18 percent of Medicare payments for office visits with new patients were incorrect or improper, about three times the error rate for established patients.

To prevent fraud and abuse, Medicare officials have repeatedly told doctors to document their claims. “If it is not documented, it has not been done” — that is the principle set forth in Medicare’s billing manual for doctors.

The Trump administration is moving away from that policy.

“We have proposed to move to a system with minimal documentation requirements for Levels 2 to 5 and one single payment rate,” Dr. Goodrich said.

Doctors now must provide more documentation for higher levels of care. Under the proposal, “practitioners would only need to meet documentation requirements currently associated with a Level 2 visit.” That would reduce the need for audits to verify the level of office visits.

Medicare officials acknowledged that doctors who typically bill at Levels 4 and 5 could see financial losses under the proposal. But they said some of the losses could potentially be offset by “add-on payments” for primary care doctors and certain other medical specialists.

With such adjustments, Medicare officials said, the impact on most doctors would be relatively modest. A table included in the proposed rule indicates that obstetricians and gynecologists would gain the most, while dermatologists, rheumatologists and podiatrists would lose the most.

 

 

 

“The Inevitable Math behind Entitlement Reform”

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“The Inevitable Math behind Entitlement Reform”

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That’s the title of a new NEJM Perspective by Michael Chernew and me. After crunching the numbers, our argument is that for long term cost control we will probably need to address growth in per capita health care utilization. The easy “solutions” won’t be enough.

Much of the projected increase in inflation-adjusted spending on health care entitlements, particularly for Medicare, stems from assumed increases in utilization (e.g., 2.75 percentage points of the 5.33% annual projected growth for Medicare spending). Strategies for holding utilization growth below projections (and more in line with very recent historical growth) will thus be central to the success of any attempt at cost containment.

[One approach] is to dissuade patients from seeking care by charging them more at the point of service. About 85% of Medicare beneficiaries have supplemental plans (e.g., Medigap) that reduce their out-of-pocket costs. Policies that limit the generosity of such plans could reduce Medicare spending considerably. However, such strategies would increase beneficiaries’ financial risks, reduce access to care, and probably exacerbate health disparities.

A second strategy is to help beneficiaries improve their health by enhancing long-term care management and preventive services with the goal of avoiding more expensive services. Evidence suggests that although this type of approach is probably beneficial to patients and may be cost-effective, it is generally not cost saving.

The piece continues with some more promising approaches, in our view. Click to read it in full (unfortunately pay-walled though).

 

Hidden From View: The Astonishingly High Administrative Costs of U.S. Health Care

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Hidden From View: The Astonishingly High Administrative Costs of U.S. Health Care

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It takes only a glance at a hospital bill or at the myriad choices you may have for health care coverage to get a sense of the bewildering complexity of health care financing in the United States. That complexity doesn’t just exact a cognitive cost. It also comes with administrative costs that are largely hidden from view but that we all pay.

Because they’re not directly related to patient care, we rarely think about administrative costs. They’re high.

A widely cited study published in The New England Journal of Medicine used data from 1999 to estimate that about 30 percent of American health care expenditures were the result of administration, about twice what it is in Canada. If the figures hold today, they mean that out of the average of about $19,000 that U.S. workers and their employers pay for family coverage each year, $5,700 goes toward administrative costs.

Such costs aren’t all bad. Some are tied up in things we may want, such as creating a quality improvement program. Others are for things we may dislike — for example, figuring out which of our claims to accept or reject or sending us bills. Others are just necessary, like processing payments; hiring and managing doctors and other employees; or maintaining information systems.

That New England Journal of Medicine study is still the only one on administrative costs that encompasses the entire health system. Many other more recent studies examine important portions of it, however. The story remains the same: Like the overall cost of the U.S. health system, its administrative cost alone is No. 1 in the world.

Using data from 2010 and 2011, one study, published in Health Affairs, compared hospital administrative costs in the United States with those in seven other places: Canada, England, Scotland, Wales, France, Germany and the Netherlands.

At just over 25 percent of total spending on hospital care (or 1.4 percent of total United States economic output), American hospital administrative costs exceed those of all the other places. The Netherlands was second in hospital administrative costs: almost 20 percent of hospital spending and 0.8 percent of that country’s G.D.P.

At the low end were Canada and Scotland, which both spend about 12 percent of hospital expenditures on administration, or about half a percent of G.D.P.

Hospitals are not the only source of high administrative spending in the United States. Physician practices also devote a large proportion of revenue to administration. By one estimate, for every 10 physicians providing care, almost seven additional people are engaged in billing-related activities.

It is no surprise then that a majority of American doctors say that generating bills and collecting payments is a major problem. Canadian practices spend only 27 percent of what U.S. ones do on dealing with payers like Medicare or private insurers.

Another study in Health Affairs surveyed physicians and physician practice administrators about billing tasks. It found that doctors spend about three hours per week dealing with billing-related matters. For each doctor, a further 19 hours per week are spent by medical support workers. And 36 hours per week of administrators’ time is consumed in this way. Added together, this time costs an additional $68,000 per year per physician (in 2006). Because these are administrative costs, that’s above and beyond the cost associated with direct provision of medical care.

In JAMA, scholars from Harvard and Duke examined the billing-related costs in an academic medical center. Their study essentially followed bills through the system to see how much time different types of medical workers spent in generating and processing them.

At the low end, such activities accounted for only 3 percent of revenue for surgical procedures, perhaps because surgery is itself so expensive. At the high end, 25 percent of emergency department visit revenue went toward billing costs. Primary care visits were in the middle, with billing functions accounting for 15 percent of revenue, or about $100,000 per year per primary care provider.

“The extraordinary costs we see are not because of administrative slack or because health care leaders don’t try to economize,” said Kevin Schulman, a co-author of the study and a professor of medicine at Duke. “The high administrative costs are functions of the system’s complexity.”

Costs related to billing appear to be growing. A literature review by Elsa Pearson, a policy analyst with the Boston University School of Public Health, found that in 2009 they accounted for about 14 percent of total health expenditures. By 2012, the figure was closer to 17 percent.

One obvious source of complexity of the American health system is its multiplicity of payers. A typical hospital has to contend not just with several public health programs, like Medicare and Medicaid, but also with many private insurers, each with its own set of procedures and forms (whether electronic or paper) for billing and collecting payment. By one estimate, 80 percent of the billing-related costs in the United States are because of contending with this added complexity.

“One can have choice without costly complexity,” said Barak Richman, a co-author of the JAMA study and a professor of law at Duke. “Switzerland and Germany, for example, have lower administrative costs than the U.S. but exhibit a robust choice of health insurers.”

An additional source of costs for health care providers is chasing patients for their portion of bills, the part not covered by insurance. With deductibles and co-payments on the rise, more patients are facing cost sharing that they may not be able to pay, possibly leading to rising costs for providers, or the collection agencies they work with, in trying to get them to do so.

Using data from Athenahealth, the Harvard health economist Michael Chernew computed the proportion of doctors’ bills that were paid by patients. For relatively small bills, those under $75, over 90 percent were paid within a year. For larger ones, over $200, that rate fell to 67 percent.

“It’s a mistake to think that billing issues only reflect complex interactions between providers and insurers,” Mr. Chernew said. “As patients are required to pay more money out of pocket, providers devote more resources to collecting it.”

A distinguishing feature of the American health system is that it offers a lot of choice, including among health plans. Because insurers and public programs have not coordinated on a set of standards for pricing, billing and collection — whatever the benefits of choice — one of the consequences is high administrative burden. And that’s another reason for high American health care prices.

 

 

 

Reducing Drug Prices and Medicare’s Role: ‘It’s Complicated’

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Reducing Drug Prices and Medicare’s Role: ‘It’s Complicated

The White House Rose Garden was in full bloom when President Trump took the podium to announce that his administration was “launching the most sweeping action in history to lower the price of prescription drugs for the American people.”

He said: “It’s been a complicated process, but not too complicated.”

Thing is, it is pretty complicated and made more so by the admittedly tangled web of lobbyists knocking with dogged determination on lawmakers’ doors in pursuit of one thing: higher drug prices.

Their efforts appear to be working. In 2017, they spent almost $280 million in pursuit of their employers’ objectives. Another estimate puts the cost of drug lobbying at $2.3 billion from 2006 to 2016, and it’s clear that the industry also pays substantially to support candidates for both houses of Congress.

The President talked about his announcement being “the most sweeping action in history to lower the price of prescription drugs.” If you remember the presidential campaign, he promised to utilize Medicare’s gorilla purchasing power to negotiate directly to reduce prices. That all sounded very promising.

What Medicare Can and Can’t-Do

Medicare buys more drugs than anyone else, because it has a base of approximately 60 million people over age 65 or younger with certain disabilities, and is the largest single healthcare payer. However, the law actually prevents Medicare from carrying on direct negotiations with pharmaceutical companies. Specifically, it bars the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) from managing the negotiations. Right now that’s Alex M. Azar II, a former executive with behemoth pharmaceutical company Lilly USA LLC, of Eli Lilly and Co.

Many were chagrined that the “American Patients First” does not, in fact, have any mandate for Medicare to negotiate directly with drug manufacturers. Some have described the situation in general as a gift, with a big bow around it, to America’s drug companies.

To understand why this happened, it helps to understand some of the history. Hearken to 2006, when Congress was in the throes of arguing the federal law around Medicare’s Part D law, the Medicare Modernization Act that became enforced in 2003. It was the most extensive rejuvenation of the program in 38 years.

Lobbyists persuaded lawmakers that if Medicare gained the ability to negotiate, that it would be akin to price control and an affront to the free market. Insurance companies in charge of subsidizing the new coverage were charged with managing drug costs.

Drugs Do Come Cheaper

In contrast, AARP invites us to consider how the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) deftly negotiates drug prices. The proof is in the pricing, as VHA pays 80 percent less for brand names than Medicare Part D. The VHA’s formulary list, that magic roster of medications it covers is a powerful negotiating tool. The relationship between Medicare and Medicaid that exists within the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) means the former two agencies must cover all FDA-approved drugs. That’s in spite of the fact that less expensive and equally effective medications can be bought on the open market.

Maybe you wonder how your fellow Americans feel about all of this. Big surprise: Democrats, Republicans, and independents are all pretty much on the same page. That’s according to a report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. The analysis states emphatically that “finding a way to make prescription medicines — and healthcare at large — more affordable for everyone has become a socioeconomic imperative.”

According to the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, a majority of Democrats (96 percent), Republicans (92 percent), and Independents (92 percent) think that yes, our government should have to negotiate power here.

Maybe Yes, Maybe No

Kaiser’s analysis of this conundrum over the “noninterference clause” is this. Those in favor of having Azar negotiate think this would result in leverage to reduce drug costs, especially around medications with sky-high prices but with no competition. They say private plans just don’t pack enough punch that way.

As expected, those who proclaim “no” shrug and opine that the Secretary simply couldn’t get better deals done. Then there’s the argument that haggling over price would inhibit pharma’s research and development, limiting the opportunities for more and better medications to improve quality of life and save lives.

As Kaiser notes, in addition to allowing the HHS Secretary to make better deals on drugs, another option would be to establish a public Part D plan that works in partnership with private Part D. “The Secretary would establish a formulary for the public Part D plan and negotiate prices for drugs on that formulary.”

There’s also a compromise approach of sorts in the mix that would address those expensive drugs and those that don’t have therapeutic alternatives: The Secretary could negotiate those.

At the end of the day, before Medicare can become the drug price negotiator extraordinaire, the law must be changed, and that’s a big lift. Based upon history, even Republicans are not expected to want to do this, and for sure pharma will recoil. That leaves consumers using Part D watching and waiting for change.

Drug Negotiation Side Effects

Increasing negotiating around Medicare could have ramifications if the President transfers expensive medications from Part B — the first Medicare legislation in 1965 —
to Part D, says The New York Times.

AARP says it’s worried about increasing out-of-pocket charges if this happens. Also, 9 million Medicare members in Part B don’t have Part D, leaving a void as to who will pay medication costs.

The publication asked doctors for their opinions and one responded that one misstep could be “a disaster.” Another worried about Part D drugs’ prices increasing more than Part B’s. Still, other notes protected classes of Part D drugs that must be covered by insurance plans, but in this instance may hamper Part D negotiations.

 

 

Forty Years of Winning Friends and Influencing People

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Forty Years of Winning Friends and Influencing People

An interview with former US Representative Henry Waxman of California.

Of the more than 12,000 Americans who have served in Congress since it convened in 1789, few have had careers as fruitful as Henry Waxman’s. Representing west Los Angeles and its surrounding areas for 40 years, Waxman, 78, left a remarkable imprint on US health policy. His manifold accomplishments were capped by the passage of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in 2010. A son of south-central Los Angeles, he worked at his father’s grocery store, earned a law degree at the University of California, Los Angeles, and in 1968 won a seat in the State Assembly. He was elected to the US House in 1974 in an era when bipartisanship was ordinary and health care had yet to become an overwhelming economic and political force in American life. Waxman was known in Congress for his persistence at wearing down opposition. Republican Senator Alan Simpson of Wyoming famously called him “tougher than a boiled owl” after negotiating the landmark Clean Air Act amendments of 1990. Waxman led efforts to ban smoking in public places and to require nutrition labels on food products. I talked with him recently about his experiences, the future of health policy, and the changing language of health reform. The transcript has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Q: In 1974, when Los Angeles voters first sent you to Washington, health policy wasn’t the ticket to political influence. You are a lawyer, not a doctor. What drew you to health care?

A: When I was first elected to the California State Assembly in 1968, I believed that if I specialized in a policy area I would have more impact than if I tried to be an expert on everything. Health policy fit my district in Los Angeles, and I could see that government needed to be involved in a whole range of decisions, from health care services to biomedical research to public health. I was chairman of the Assembly Committee on Health. I was elected to Congress in 1974 in a Democratic wave election. I wanted to get on a health policy committee, which was Energy and Commerce. Democrats picked up so many seats and there were so many committee vacancies that year that it was easy to claim one, and I got on that committee. Within four years there was a vacancy for chair of the health and environment subcommittee, and I stepped up to that. It gave me a lot more impact.

Q: What role do you think health care will play in the upcoming elections?

A: If the Democrats do as well as I expect and hope, it will be more because of what Trump was doing in the health area than anything else. Even though people value health care services and insurance, the idea that the president and the GOP wanted to take away health insurance and reduce benefits for people who needed it — that was something they didn’t expect and were angry about.

Q: Is it feasible to provide health coverage to everyone?

A: I have always felt we needed access to universal health coverage. It wasn’t until we got the ACA under Obama that we were able to narrow the gap of the uninsured — those who couldn’t get insurance through their jobs, who weren’t eligible for Medicare and Medicaid, who had preexisting conditions, or who couldn’t afford the premiums. The ACA helped people have access to an individual health policy by eliminating insurance company discrimination and giving a subsidy to those who couldn’t afford coverage. It wasn’t a perfect bill, but it was important. The idea that Republicans would come along and bring back preexisting conditions as a reason to deny people coverage is what drove enough GOP senators to stop the GOP repeal bill from going forward last year. We’ll see what they do by way of executive orders or through the courts to try to frustrate people’s ability to buy insurance.

The Republican ACA repeal bill last year was a real shock because they also wanted to repeal the Medicaid program and allow states to cut funds for people in nursing homes, people with disabilities, and low-income patients who rely so heavily on that program. And they had proposals to hurt Medicare that House Speaker Paul Ryan had been advancing. The American people do not want to deny others insurance coverage and access to health services.

Q: Bipartisanship has gone out of style. Can it be revived?

A: It doesn’t look very likely now, but I built my legislative career on the idea that there could be bipartisan consensus to move forward on legislation. All the big bills had bipartisan support. The only bill that got through on a strictly partisan basis was the Obamacare legislation, and I regretted that. The Republicans just wanted to denigrate it and scare people into believing the ACA would provide for death panels, hurt people, take away their insurance, and keep them from getting access to care. None of that was true.

Q: A growing number of Democrats want to establish a single-payer health care system for the state. Do you agree with them?

A: A lot of people mistake the phrase “single payer” with universal health coverage. While I share the passion of people who want to cover everybody, single payer is not a panacea. My goal is universal health coverage. The Republican attempt last year to repeal the ACA and send 32 million Americans into the ranks of the uninsured was an albatross around their necks.

But the Democrats could turn this winning issue into a loser if some make a single-payer bill such as Medicare for All into a litmus test. I cosponsored single-payer legislation in Congress with Senator Ted Kennedy, and I always sought to bring the nation closer to universal coverage. I authored laws to bring Medicaid to more children and to establish the Children’s Health Insurance Program, and I led the fight to enact the ACA. These bills were very important. If we passed something like a single-payer bill, which would be extremely hard to do, we would be passing up opportunities to make progress. A lot of people who want a Medicare for All bill don’t realize that those of us on Medicare have to pay for supplemental insurance, because Medicare doesn’t cover everything. Medicare doesn’t generally cover certain services like nursing home care, so to get help you have to impoverish yourself to qualify for Medicaid.

One organization is sending out letters telling voters to support a single-payer bill and you won’t have to pay anything anymore. We can’t afford something like that. Democrats can embrace a boundless vision for a health care future without being trapped by a rigid model of how to get there. We should increase the number of people with comprehensive health insurance and focus on lowering costs. People with Medicare don’t want to give it up. People have health insurance on the job.

I would rather expand on what we have and build it out to cover everybody.

People don’t seem to remember that Democrats could barely muster the votes for the ACA when we had 60 votes in the Senate and a 255–179 majority in the House. Even if we recapture Congress and the presidency, I don’t think we would get a Medicare for All bill passed. It would require such a high tax increase that people would be absolutely shocked.

Q: What would be the national impact of California adopting a universal coverage plan?

A: Californian progress would be a model for the rest of the country, and we would be doing what’s right for the people of California who don’t have access to coverage. I think California is a trendsetter — for good and for bad. Proposition 13 and term limits started in California and spread to other states, and I think they have been a disservice. We’ve also done a lot of good things in California, and the rest of the country follows those things as well.

People who try to marginalize California do so at their own risk. People around the country look at California as a leader. California embraced the ACA, expanded Medicaid, and has been moving forward on making sure our public health care system is reforming itself to represent the needs for population health care and to ensure that uninsured low-income patients get access to decent, good-quality health care.

Q: More states are adopting work requirements in Medicaid. Do you think that will become the standard nationwide?

A: Work requirements are inconsistent with the Medicaid law. We’re talking about making people go to work to get health care when they’re sick. I just don’t think it makes sense. The courts may throw it out, and if not, at some point there will be a reaction against it, and it will be repealed by a future Congress.

Q: Some see parallels between the conduct of tobacco companies and opioid makers. Do you think “Big Pharma” will be held to account like “Big Tobacco?”

A: In the difficult fight against big tobacco, one of the lessons we learned was that even an extremely powerful group like the tobacco industry could be beaten if you keep pushing back. Even though there was overwhelming public support for regulation of tobacco, it took until 2009 before we could enact tobacco regulation by giving the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) authority to act. In the meantime, there were lawsuits by states to recover money they spent under Medicaid programs to cope with the harm from smoking. With opioids, there will be more and more lawsuits against distributors and manufacturers whose actions resulted in deaths of people from opioid addiction. Congress now is grappling with many bills to help people who are addicted, to prevent addiction from spreading further, and to restrict the ability to get the drug product. I’m optimistic we can come to terms with this crisis.

Q: What have you been doing since retiring from Congress?

A: I wanted to stay in the DC area near my son, Michael Waxman, and his family. He had a traditional public relations firm and he asked me to join him. In the health area, we represent Planned Parenthood in California, public hospitals in California, community health centers at the national level, and hospitals that get 340b drug discounts because they serve many low-income patients. We have foundation grants to work on problems of high pharmaceutical prices, and foundation grants to have a program to make sure women know about the whole range of health services available to them for free under the ACA. I enjoy working with my son and pursuing causes I would have pursued as a member of Congress.

 

 

 

Proposed changes to 340B program would cut DSH eligibility by half

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https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/hospital-management-administration/proposed-changes-to-340b-program-would-cut-dsh-eligibility-by-half.html

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A new congressional proposal would raise the minimum disproportionate share hospital adjustment percentage that DSH hospitals must meet to qualify for the 340B drug discount program, eliminating 340B eligibility for over half the participating hospitals, according to a study by 340B Health.

Under the bill, proposed by Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, 573 of the 1,115 DSH hospitals enrolled in the 340B program would no longer be eligible for the drug discounts. Under the current rules, DSH hospitals are eligible for the 340B program if their Medicare DSH adjustment percentage is greater than 11.75 percent. The proposal would raise the qualifying rate to 18 percent.

Here are the 10 states with the most DSH hospitals that would lose 340B eligibility under the proposal:

  1. California (39)
  2. Texas (35)
  3. North Carolina (33)
  4. Georgia (31)
  5. Ohio (29)
  6. Michigan (23)
  7. New York (21)
  8. Illinois (19)
  9. Alabama (19)
  10. Pennsylvania (18)